This study sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research lives up to the Bureau's object which is “to ascertain and to present to the public important economic facts and their interpretation in a scientific and impartial manner.” Important economic facts are presented to throw light on four topics: concentration in Canadian manufacturing industries in 1948; differences in concentration between plants and firms in Canadian manufacturing industries at the same date; differences between firm concentration in a number of Canadian manufacturing industries in 1948 and firm concentration in the corresponding United States industries in 1947; and the trend in the concentration of plants in Canadian manufacturing industries in the period from 1922 to 1948.

On October 1, 1950, Canadian authorities abandoned the policy of maintaining a fixed rate of exchange for the Canadian dollar for the first time since the beginning of the Second World War. Thereafter the dollar was allowed to fluctuate with little interference from official quarters. The significance of this event extends beyond the evolution of exchange policy in Canada, for it must have affected the attitudes of those countries that have been studying a more flexible exchange system than the one envisaged by the Articles of Agreement of the International Monetary Fund.

Canadian monetary authorities have been pursuing a policy designed to reduce changes in the value of the Canadian dollar. Official policy has been described as follows: “Transactions of the Exchange Fund Account in the market in United States dollars were directed to helping to maintain orderly conditions without preventing basic supply and demand factors from determining the level of the rate.” It is argued in this paper that a stabilizing agency that operates according to the commonly accepted principle of resisting all movements in the rate does not, in fact, contribute to that rate's stability. An examination of the operations of the Canadian Exchange Fund Account from September, 1950, to December, 1954, supports this argument. An analysis of the meaning of stabilizing policy will precede the discussion of Canadian experience.

The object of combines policy is to preserve effective competition by reducing the monopolistic attributes of markets, industries, or industry-market complexes. Neither effective competition nor monopolistic attributes can be measured without ambiguity. Efforts to protect the former and dispose of the latter cannot be evaluated by the customary criterion of economic efficiency, namely, the ratio of the quantity of competition preserved–or of monopolistic elements removed–to the quantity of resources devoted to the purpose.

The following, then, is a collection of qualitative comments, rather than an evaluation. The amount of resources devoted to combines policy is taken as given. The manner in which they have been used is considered on the premise that there are always some markets in which competition can be made more effective by public intervention. The resources in question are those of the Combines Branch of the Department of Justice. While the entire policy includes also the work of the Minister of Justice, of the Attorneys General of the several provinces, and of the courts, in this paper attention is mainly directed to some of the reports prepared under the authority of the Combines Investigation Act since the end of the Second World War. The choice of markets where the threat to competition must be checked, and of remedies by which the threat is to be reduced, has a bearing on the effectiveness of combines policy.